Why can't it be both? Why can't linguistics be something she was indeed interested in, but to do her job all she really needed was to flip a switch and be able to service the equipment itself? Knowing other languages thus ended up being almost a bonus...

I read somewhere that Uhura'a linguistic skills were added to the character for the aborted Phase II television series, and it's something Nichelle talked about at conventions - hence it's inclusion in several novels (IIRC, she even spoke perfect Klingon in one of Diane Duane's!)

I guess, like McCoy's divorce backstory, it's one of those little pseudo-canon tidbits that never fully materialized until the reboot.

If Uhura did have an ear and a pair of lips for languages, it would seem somewhat probable that she'd tackle the all-important Klingon language at some point. Since she's about as fluent in the Klingon tongue as I'm in French, the odds of her mastering a large number of other languages would appear to go down somewhat.

It remains to be seen how different the two Uhuras ultimately are. Can nuUhura sing or dance? Can she bypass a transtator circuit with a hairpin?

Well, Russian is difficult as such - and the Russian spoken by the rank and file of the military is nearly impenetrable, combining jail slang with pop culture references and colonial influences from the Caucasus and whatnot. If the Klingon Empire is to be a good analogy to the Soviet Union at its point of collapse, a good command of textbook Klingon might be about as useful in deciphering the utterings of the Morska crew as a good command of textbook Mandarin.

I would have liked to have seen Enterprise survive ST III, then head back to Earth under escort in ST IV, and have that do the time travel. The other ships race out ahead to meet the probe and are disabled.

Or, what would you replace the self-destruct scene with, in terms of dramatic impact that the movie so desperately tried to achieve? Klingons kill not just David, but Saavik as well? Klingons kill Chekov (by accident, I presume)? Sarek dies before Spock is revived? Genesis revives not just Spock, but Khan as well?

Or, what would you replace the self-destruct scene with, in terms of dramatic impact that the movie so desperately tried to achieve? Klingons kill not just David, but Saavik as well? Klingons kill Chekov (by accident, I presume)? Sarek dies before Spock is revived? Genesis revives not just Spock, but Khan as well?

Timo Saloniemi

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Agreed. The sacrifice of the Enterprise is possibly the most dramatic and memorable moment in the TSFS. It wouldn't want to lose it.

Or, what would you replace the self-destruct scene with, in terms of dramatic impact that the movie so desperately tried to achieve? Klingons kill not just David, but Saavik as well? Klingons kill Chekov (by accident, I presume)? Sarek dies before Spock is revived? Genesis revives not just Spock, but Khan as well?

Timo Saloniemi

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Agreed. The sacrifice of the Enterprise is possibly the most dramatic and memorable moment in the TSFS. It wouldn't want to lose it.

I personally think Uhura being a polyglot makes sense. If you're a comm officer encountering new life forms and the captain needs to talk to them, s/he needs you to do his job.

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For me this has just always been implicit. I remember getting to read SPOCK MUST DIE! when I was 13 or so and not thinking twice about Uhura being the one to suggest coding messages to Starfleet that would fool Klingons with the aid of Eurish, the 'language' created by novelist James Joyce.

Damn, it has been 40 years and I still want to see a TREK space battle as good as the one in that little book (or better still, the one early on in THE WOUNDED SKY.)

DC Comics covers the time period during their second Trek run. Peter David was the writer for the first nineteen issues, including "The Trial of James T. Kirk" in issues #10-12.

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Not only in those issues -- pretty much every issue of the 1989 relaunch (with the new issue #1) is set post-TFF, leading up to the events of TUC, including Captain Sulu's first major mission after taking command of the Excelsior.

The NCC-1701-A article at Memory Beta lays out virtually every last mission undertaken by the starship from 2286 to 2293:

To answer the original poster's question, the types of missions performed by the Enterprise-A spanned the entire gamut, from routine exploration, to intervention in numerous interstellar wars, planetary evacuations, ferrying diplomats, border-peacekeeping duties, and things like covert extraction missions in non-friendly space (including that of the Romulans).

The vast majority of known stories set aboard the Enterprise-A were actually told in the pages of the two DC Comics series, from early 1987 to 1988, and then from 1989 to 1996.

Chronologically speaking, the series covered much of that vessel's eight-year service history, from early 2286 (immediately post-ST IV) to at least 2290 (we see Sulu's commmand-taking of the Excelsior during the series, and him leaving the Enterprise-A behind forever), but it appeared to end maybe a year or two prior to the events of Star Trek VI (though still working characters like Admiral Cartwright and Valeris into those pre-movie storylines).

By contrast, we actually received very, very few original prose stories set aboard the Enterprise-A in the Pocket novel series, not counting the movie novelizations themselves.

Interesting topic. I've been flirting with the idea of setting a book in that period . . .

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Please do. I'd love to read it. In any case, I'd guess that the Enterprise still had its share of missions, though nothing approaching their original five-year mission during TOS. Sulu would have left by 2290 to command Excelsior. The rest of the crew would likely have stayed aboard during the intervening years, as they're all in their normal places by the time TUC rolls around.

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Same here. It's one of the most fascinating time periods in Star Trek from a characterization standpoint, occurring as it does in the aftermath of the rather traumatic "Genesis trilogy" (Spock's death and resurrection, Kirk's son murdered, the first Enterprise destroyed, Earth threatened, Kirk demoted, and a brand-new Enterprise commissioned, plus deteriorating galactic relations with the Klingon Empire), which could allow for a great deal of emotional depth to be mined.

Indeed, Dayton Ward proved this to be the case with his post-Star Trek V novel (In the Name of Honor), which is set in a time period that not many novel authors have ventured into.

One request (as a longtime fan), Greg: If you do decide to write this book, please spit in the eye of decades of former Paramount policy, and work in as many references to the DC Comics run as you possibly can...the children will thank you.

I've always found this interesting. IIRC the events of Star Trek V occurred in 2287, with VI coming in 2293. A pretty significant gap.

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Might be longer still - ST5:TFF seems to occur mere weeks after the ending of ST4:TVH, and ST2 through ST4 appear to only cover a few months of action. The earliest plausible date for the ST2-ST4 thing is 2284... Although we could argue that there was a year or more between the main body of ST4 and the final scene of ST4.

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Regarding the dating of The Final Frontier, there's a definite canonical establishment of the events of film taking place in 2287 in the TNG episode "Evolution" -- Data mentions that the last major wide-scale computer-failure aboard a Federation starship occurred in this year, which was a clear reference to the NCC-1701-A's computer troubles (the fifth movie was released in theaters only a couple of months before the broadcast of this episode).

The dating of The Voyage Home is locked in by dialogue from the episode "The Neutral Zone" -- Data establishes the year as being 2364; according to various TNG production documents, the series is set 78 years after the events of that film, which places TVH's opening scenes in March, 2286 at the absolute earliest.

You're correct about the apparent time lapse during the final sections of Star Trek IV, although it's probably on a much lesser scale -- weeks or months almost certainly pass between the HMS Bounty's reappearance with the whales and Captain Kirk taking command of the Enterprise-A, possibly between that scene and the trial, or else between the verdict and the final Spacedock scene.

Starfleet would've needed weeks, at the very least, to repaint the outer hull of the new Enterprise to reflect the new fleet service-registry number.

STVI makes it pretty clear the crew have been broken up for at least 3 years (McCoy didn't even know Sulu was a Captain - and the film opens with him returning from a 3-year mission!) and are reuniting for the peace mission.

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Not really -- in fact, if anything, the movie suggests that the crew is still regularly involved in the operation of the starship.

The Spacedock launch-scene alone appears to confirm that the Gorkon peace-mission is simply one more recent routine mission for Kirk and his crew, suggested by how quickly and nonchalantly they take their stations, get the vessel prepped for departure, etc.

True, they've been serving together as a cohesive unit for years by that point, but the movie shows Kirk treating the whole thing with almost a lazy, detached air...a milk-run, at best.

I tend to think that relations between the Federation and the Klingons really went sour during that time, perhaps triggered by an event that caused even once moderates in Starfleet to have an extremely low opinion of Klingons.

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It was a combination of a couple of factors -- as Timo mentions, there were a series of attacks perpetrated by the prototype Bird-of-Prey commanded by General Chang (the IKS Dakronh) in the months leading up to Star Trek VI, including the destruction of a Federation research-base where Carol Marcus is terribly wounded (from the ST VI novelization).

The other occurred in 2287, not long after the events of The Final Frontier, where Kirk and Sulu witness the massacre of an entire Klingon penal colony under orders from the Imperial government merely to cover up the Empire's illegal detention of UFP civilians and captured Starfleet personnel. The incident so disgusts Captain Kirk that it sours his entire attitude towards the Klingons, leading into the sixth feature film (chronicled in the TOS novel In the Name of Honor).

FWIW, DC's comic series of the 90s had them more or less on another five-year mission. Works for me.

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Pretty much -- the starship is in continuous service from 2286 until the events of Star Trek VI, as depicted in the DC Comics run, with no real interruption of command-structure (Captain Kirk retains command throughout the comic series), and other non-DC comics likewise depict Kirk leading the starship on routine exploratory missions as late as 2292 (in the Wildstorm run).

I believe the original TUC script contained dialog more clearly suggesting (or at least intimating) that the crew was basically puttering around before standing down. I believe the thought that Uhura was teaching comes from her mentioning she's "supposed to be chairing a seminar." That of course doesn't explicitly mean she was teaching.

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The PC game Starfleet Academy (released in 1997) actually expands further upon this notion -- in the live-action footage featuring Shatner, Takei, and Koenig, Sulu takes a temporary position away from the Enterprise-A as guest instructor at the Academy prior to his upcoming promotion to the captaincy.

I get the impression that Starfleet used them more like galactic troubleshooters rather than have them on general duties.

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This.

My pet theory, based on what we see on screen, has always been that following the Earth probe situation in STIV, Kirk and crew aren't exactly on the 'active duty' roster. On both occasions that we see the 1701-A, the crew are initially seen/said to be seperated from each other, and it's only a unique crisis situation which sees them all being recruited for a mission. I hold that this is pretty much it: the Excelsior was still undergoing tests in STIV and STV, hence why Sulu is still hanging out waiting for her to become available and is able to come back to 1701-A for the Nimbus II mission, and 1701-B is obviously on the drawing board as well. 1701-A is not an 'active ship' and incidents like the crisis at Nimbus III or the Khitomer accords see Kirk and crew being wheeled out, almost ceremonially, because they've got the peculiar skills needed for that one mission, and then afterwards they probably all go back into semi-retirement. Scotty talks about such in STVI, McCoy has no idea where Sulu is (and the others all act like they haven't seen each other in years), and Spock is away doing diplomatic stuff.

I understand the need for fandom to fill in the gaps, but I've always thought maybe the 1701-A Enterprise had at best only a small handful of "special assignments" during that period, but was otherwise a ship that just didn't get out all that much.

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Although pretty much all non-filmic sources (such as the DC series and the novels) depict the Enterprise-A in continuous, regular operational service as a front-line tactical command cruiser and exploratory vessel.

That being said, the "troubleshooter" designation is actually quite accurate as a descriptor for the duties Captain Kirk and his crew performed during those years -- rather than a "traditional" five-year long-term mission of exploration, it's very much like The Final Frontier suggests, in that Starfleet Command frequently "needs Jim Kirk" to carry out most of the toughest assignments (from diplomacy to preventing wide-scale interplanetary wars).

Indeed, many of the stories told in the DC series (and in novels like Probe) far eclipse TFF in scope, despite its ambitions -- those eight years contain some of the biggest missions of the "classic" Enterprise crew's career, but they're probably also the most frequently overlooked, in terms of attention paid to other eras (the TOS television-era missions, etc.).

EDIT: You can also type in the year (2287, 2288, etc...) in the search engine at Memory Beta and it will give you a list of all published works placed in that year.

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Be sure to check out the NCC-1701-A entry at Memory Beta -- not only does it feature every prose story (i.e., the Pocket novels) featuring that starship, but also every known graphic/comic book story, integrated and organized by year of operational service history: